New Car Cost

How Much Does a New Car Cost?

To get the best price on your new car, you need to know how much the dealer paid for it. Some cars, such as the Toyota Prius in California and Massachusetts, sell for MSRP or even more due to the high demand. In these cases, you'll be fortunate to pay sticker price.

Typical costs:

For most cars, you'll want to know what the dealer paid for the car, so you can offer a fair profit - often 4-10% above that price. To find out how much a dealer paid for the car: Use a website such as Edmunds[1] to find out the Invoice Price for the make and model you are interested in.

Add the destination charge (often around $500-$600) to that price. This is the fee the dealer must pay for the car to be delivered to them.

Use a website like Edmunds to find out any current dealer incentives. This is additional money the car manufacturer pays to the dealer. By clicking on the "incentives" link on Edmunds, you can see any Manufacturer to Dealer incentive payments. Subtract this amount from the price.

Use a website like Edmunds to determine the Dealer Holdback[2] . This is money the dealer overpays for the car and gets back on a regular basis. Often it's 3% of the MSRP value of the car.

This is the price the dealer has paid for this car. Depending on current market conditions, you can start negotiations at what you believe is a fair profit on top of this price. Consumer Reports recommends 4-8% in addition to the dealer's price. During our tests, the Edmunds "True Market Value" price "What Others are Paying" averaged 6-7% more than the dealer price we calculated.

To see the prices of some of the car dealers near you, you can try vehix.com[3] to get started. The site will let you see the inventory of local dealers and sort by the price column. However, after you use vehix, you might try getting a better deal at a local dealer.

Tip: Costco and AAA offer members what they call "hassle free, haggle free pre-negotiated car prices with dealers". We found only Costco's program to provide useful information because they ask for a make, model and year, so you can get a quote for an actual car. Warning: We didn't find these programs to be "hassle or haggle free." For some of these programs, we were barraged by phone calls offering "VIP meetings" with sales managers to negotiate a "special" price," which we hardly consider "hassle or haggle free."

10 Most Popular Cosmetic Procedures Before the HolidaysWith reunions and other get-togethers scheduled during the holiday season, most people want to look their best at this time of year. For some, that means filling in those wrinkles with a bit of botox, or having a nip and tuck down here and there. || Posted November 23 2013

This is a reply for Ovannalntarne in Walvis Bay, AL
From personal experience I donated a old Taurus that wasn't drivable anymore to Purple Hearts. They fix it up and give it to war vets. They provide the towing service. However, the value of the car was not enough for me to get any tax deduction. I'm a Virginian and I think its about like $6000 in value of donation to be eligible for a dedection.

I want to donate my car to a charity. I do want to recieve a tax deduction, but I don't want it to go to just any charity I would very much like my car to go to a needy family. I am in the Houton area. Can anybody help me or have any sugestions.

CostHelper is based in Silicon Valley and provides consumers with unbiased price information about thousands of goods and services. Our writers are experienced journalists who adhere to our strict editorial ethics policy.

CostHelper Community

Power WashingPaid: 280.00Highly recommended.Jerry came and gave a free estimate. They pressure washed my walkway and driveway which is nice size and patio area. Did a fantastic job... [more]

Extraction & Bone graftPaid: 4200.0012 teeth (upper) extracted. Felt pain of every tooth being pulled. Worse Dental experience ever. Had Novocain and Laughing gas. Told dentists I was in pain and she just kept shooting more Novocain into my gums. Told a total of 5 hours... [more]